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salem witch wikipedia

Remember that terrifying time in history when a buncha women and some dudes were offed due to mass hysteria?

Well, Jonathan Corwin was a judge during the Salem Witch Trials, and his psalm book from 1693 is going for more than my net worth (commencing 10-min-cry in a corner… okay, complete, we’re all just “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” right?). The Bay Psalm Book  could sell for 40k, maybe more. Corwin was a judge when 19 accused witches were targeted and hanged (well, one was crushed to death but that doesn’t make it ANY BETTER) in a fit of overzealous religious extremism.

At the time, Massachusetts was led by conservative Puritans–this sounds like invective, but it’s actually true; this is where the invective comes from. The fervor began when children, young women in particular, in Salem Village started having “fits,” for which doctors could not find any physical evidence. Let’s remember, these are doctors in the late 1600’s we’re talking about, so it’s not like medicine was modern or anything. So, because doctors couldn’t make sense of it with their not-yet-modern-medicine, a number of women from Salem and neighboring towns, singled out for their otherness or lack of sameness (e.g. Tituba the black slave) were accused of witchcraft. Because that made more sense. Somehow.

Some of these women’s husbands, sons, or male associates were also arrested, though women were largely the targets; basically the whole thing blew up, and because there was no due process, they were “tried” by means of public interrogation. In once instance, a 4-year-old girl was pressured into giving evidence that her mother was a witch. Wut.

So anyway, Corwin was one of the goons in all this mess, and his prayer book is being auctioned. It itself has no connection to the trials outside of its former owner’s involvement, though apparently was also owned at one point by the descendants of hanged-as-witch John Proctor, the main character of Arthur Miller’s historical fiction The Crucible, a play about the Salem Witch Trials. Creepy and interesting.

(via the AP)

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Nandita Seshadri